


How Gizmo Adopted Sal

by cricketss



Category: Sally Face (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, Gizmo is a kitten here but he's a Maine Coon so he's still big, Light Angst, Pre-Canon, but I'm assuming it was sometimes in elementary, it's unclear when Sal adopted Gizmo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-25
Updated: 2019-07-25
Packaged: 2020-07-19 14:43:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19975795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cricketss/pseuds/cricketss
Summary: After the death of his mother and the loss of his face, Sal is ostracized at school. The loneliness hits him harder than he expected, and he longs for any form of friendship.He finds what he's looking for in an unlikely place. Or, more specifically, in an unlikely cat.





	How Gizmo Adopted Sal

**Author's Note:**

> Gizmo needs an origin story.

Sal’s fingers fiddled with the straps on the back of his head. It was a habit he had formed recently. If he could feel them, he could be sure they were still there, tightly buckled, holding his prosthetic firmly on his face. Or what was left of it. 

Nobody was around on the street right now, he knew that. But it had happened one too many times, and now a permanent fear had been born inside of him. His heart would beat louder, and his breathing would quicken if it had been too long and he hadn’t made sure that they were still locked. 

Weirdly, he was more self-conscious about his straps than his actual prosthetic. The prosthetic was in the front. If people looked at him funny like they always did, he could see them, and he could at least know. The straps were on his back. They stood out against his bright blue hair and quickly drew attention and Sal couldn’t see if anyone looked at them and he couldn’t know. Every time someone touched them, he lost all feeling in his body, and his breathing ceased. 

No one had actually ripped his prosthetic off. Not yet, anyway. But everyone felt the sick need to joke about it, and Sal didn’t know anymore if he didn’t let it show enough or if they couldn’t tell or if they just didn’t care how much it made him panic every single time. The thought of the ruins of his face being on display for everyone to see made his throat close and his eye sting and made him want to curl into a ball and pretend that it was all a dream and when he opened his eye he would magically have his face and his mom back. 

Sal was beginning to understand that wasn’t how life worked. When he opened his eye, he was only met with the sight of his bare bedroom wall and the silence of his empty home. He had begun to accept this was just how it was going to be for him, but it was hard. What stung most was the loneliness. If he could have had at least one friend, even if only to make dumb jokes with and take his mind off things, he would have been able to cope. But no one wanted to be friends with the freak with the mask. Sal couldn’t really blame them. 

A soft meow pulled the boy out of his internal monologue and made him pause his walk home from school. Usually, he never did that, yearning to be between the walls of his home as soon as possible, but curiosity had always been one of his defining traits. 

It was coming from around a corner, behind an apartment building. He wavered at the thought that there could be a person there as well or a stray dog, but something stronger inside of him pushed him to tiptoe around the building despite it.

The first thing he spotted was the overflowing trash that littered the back of the building. He frowned, the foul smell invading his nostrils. Another low meow made his eye snap to a small strip of grass around the edge of the building. Curled up next to the wall was a cat. It wasn’t just any cat though. It was big and fluffy, but a closer inspection would reveal that the striped orange fur added more to its size than its actual body. It looked so skinny, Sal couldn’t imagine then how fat it would one day become.

There was something odd about it. Something Sal couldn’t place, but for some reason, this cat seemed important. Despite its frail state, the cat’s slashed irises looked at him without a hint of fear. Sal envied its apparent confidence.

Sal hesitated. The cat kept looking straight at him, its tail sweeping the ground behind it. He was an animal person, and cats were his favorite. But this cat, even though its features looked like those of a kitten, still seemed so big to him. If things had gone differently before, he would probably already be wrist-deep in its fur, but the last time he had tried to pet a stray animal had not gone so well.

The cat, however, kept meowing insistently and its eyes were weirdly expressive and persuading as if it thought Sal actually understood it. Sal found himself letting out a breathless laugh behind his prosthetic. Maybe, in a more indirect way, he did, because before he knew it, he was checking to see if anyone was around. Carefully, he jumped over the small fence that separated the grass from the sidewalk.

As soon as he was inside the small garden, the cat sprung up, sauntering over to him. Its slow and controlled movements calmed Sal. He lowered himself and held out his hand. When the cat nuzzled against it, he opened his palm, running it across its fur. He was right, it was so so soft and fluffy. It reminded him of his favorite blanket, but if it was also warm and could purr.

It seemed to take to Sal immediately as it began rubbing against his legs. Sal stopped. A long-forgotten warmth bubbled in his chest. He lowered himself further, sitting cross-legged on the grass. The cat paused, blinking at him. Without any hesitation, it climbed in his lap, curling into a ball and purring softly.

“Hmm, nice to know I make a good pillow,” he mumbled. Sal tried to subdue it because this was a random stray cat, but his insides melted when it nuzzled its head into his shirt. This animal was the first to show him any affection in… a long time. Sal never even realized how much he missed it until now.

Sal stood frozen there for longer than he’d like to admit. A knot formed in his throat at the thought of leaving. This odd cat had succeeded to pull at the corners of his lips, and he dreaded the hollowness he would feel when he was alone again. But as the sun lowered in the sky, he knew he had to go home. Hesitantly, he nudged it with his knuckles, hoping it would understand and climb off his lap. That did nothing. With a sight, he snuck his fingers under its warm belly, carefully lifting it off and placing it on the grass. The cat meowed in protest, turning to look at him with a pair of offended eyes the second it was let go.

Sal got up. “I’m sorry. I’ll come back tomorrow too… but you probably won’t be here anymore,” his voice betrayed his regret, and he lowered his gaze. He wished he at least had some food for it, but he never brought any to school. He was still too afraid to eat there.

With one last look at the cat, he turned around and jumped over the fence again. The cat snuck under it, immediately on his heels. Sal almost tripped over it when it wiggled between his feet. “No, no, I can’t take you home,” he told it as if it understood him.

Maybe it did because it gave a displeased meow. Sal’s shoulders dropped. He walked further, hoping the cat would eventually give up and turn around. His dad would never let him keep a pet.

The cat followed him all the way to the front door of his apartment building. It had not been a short walk, and by the end of it, Sal’s heart had sunk deep into his chest. It was one thing to leave a cat a few streets away, it was another to shut the door in front of it. He unlocked the front door and paused. He looked at the animal again. It was sitting in front of him, its head dropped to one side, its eyes expectant and impatient as if there was no doubt that he was going to go inside with Sal. 

It snuck inside the second Sal opened the door. The boy gulped, trailing behind it. He didn’t want to cause his dad any more trouble. “You can’t stay here, you need to go…” he trailed off. His eye ran over its body again, the harsh artificial light accentuating all the dirty patches in its fur and how it all hung like a coat against a small, frail body. Maybe Sal felt bad for it. Maybe Sal felt bad for himself. Maybe sometimes, helping someone or something else is a way to help yourself. Whatever it was, he just couldn’t bring himself to kick it out.

He told himself he was only bringing it up to feed it, and then he would take it outside again. The latter never happened. The name ‘Gizmo’ popped in his head later that evening, when they were curled up together on the couch. Sal was laying down with a blanket over him and with Gizmo snuggled to his chest, and they were both watching TV. By the time Henry got home, Sal was already attached, and when he presented Gizmo to him, and he saw the wide smile on his son’s unmasked face, he couldn’t bring himself to separate them. He knew Sal needed some form of companion.

It quickly became apparent that the cat had a lot of quirks, and for the most part, he ran the house while Henry was at work and Sal was at school. His biggest quirk, however, was that somehow he always knew when Sal was upset.

Whenever things became too much at school, Sal could count on Gizmo being home and could count on him snuggling himself between his arms no matter where he curled up. As he buried his face in his soft fur, he found that for the first time in a long while, he could cope.

**Author's Note:**

> I oscillated a lot between writing this and writing a crack version of it because Gizmo is too much of a bamf to have ever been a poor stray kitty. But I decided to go for the feels, hope you enjoyed!


End file.
